London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

The mother of a seven-year-old boy with a brain tumour mounted a midnight attempt to stop a potentially life-saving operation going ahead, the High Court heard today.

The last-ditch appeal failed and Neon Roberts is now described as “sharp as ever”.

However his mother, Sally Roberts, is back in the High Court today making a fresh attempt to stop her son undergoing radiotherapy treatment as part of his recovery.

News of the dramatic appeal, which came just hours before the operation had been due to start, was revealedby Mr Justice Bodey. He had refused Ms Roberts’s attempt to stop the operation in a judgment at 3pm on Tuesday. Today he said that she had made an emergency call to Appeal Court judge Lord Justice Ward at his home at 10.50pm.

He refused her attempt to overturn Mr Justice Bodey’s decision at 12.35am yesterday.

The operation went ahead and the court today was told that it “went well” and Ms Roberts is “hugely relieved”.

She told the Daily Mail that her son had woken up after the seven hour operation and told nurses: “I can still talk you know.”

She spoke of her son’s “amazing spirit” and said that he was “doing so much better” than after a previous operation.

Doctors had said that it was “highly likely” that Neon would have died without yesterday’s operation.

But Ms Roberts, 37, from Brighton, had refused to give her consent because she feared side effects such as mutism and because she did not trust the judgment of British doctors.

She is continuing to challenge their view of what is right for her son and is seeking opinions from experts around the world.

She has also sacked her legal team and was today in conference with her new QC Ian Peddie. Mr Peddie told the court that she would be seeking an adjournment of the radiotherapy hearing until the new year.

Ms Roberts arrived at court minutes after the hearing started having come from the hospital.

Neon’s father, Ben, 34, has always been in favour of the conventional cancer treatment and remains at Neon’s bedside. The case continues.